Oshie leads Blues to win

Published
12:00 am CST, Sunday, January 4, 2015

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — T.J. Oshie scored his second career hat trick to move past the 100-goal milestone in his career and the St. Louis Blues snapped a five-game road losing streak by beating the San Jose Sharks 7-2 on Saturday night.

Alexander Steen and Kevin Shattenkirk each had a goal and three assists, and Jaden Schwartz and Dmitrij Jaskin also scored for the Blues, who were dominant from the start a night after losing in Anaheim. Brian Elliott made 18 saves to give St. Louis its second win in the past eight games.

Joe Pavelski reached the 20-goal plateau for the sixth time in his career and Melker Karlsson also scored for the Sharks, who have lost four of five. Antti Niemi allowed six goals on 27 shots before getting pulled early in the third period as the Sharks allowed their most goals at home since falling 7-2 to Chicago on Nov. 25, 2009.

The Sharks played without star center Joe Thornton, who had his 319 consecutive games played streak snapped after sustaining an upper-body injury from a hard hit by Anaheim’s Clayton Stoner on Wednesday.

Thornton’s absence was felt most on the power play where San Jose failed to convert any of its six chances. A lackluster power play late in the second turned the tide to St. Louis.

After the Sharks struggled even to get set up in the offensive zone for the entire two minutes, the Blues struck in the closing seconds to take a two-goal lead into the third. Jaden Schwartz won a battle behind the net with Brent Burns and sent a blind, backhand pass in front to Shattenkirk, who was all alone for the tap-in that made it 4-2.

Oshie had given the Blues the lead earlier in the period when he zig-zagged his way through the San Jose defense and beat Niemi with a wrist shot for his 100th career goal.

He added another in the third after Alex Stalock replaced Niemi to give him his second hat trick. He also scored three goals against Minnesota on March 27, 2014.

St. Louis had 13 of the first 14 shots on goal but trailed 2-1 late in the first after Karlsson and Pavelski scored in a 40-second span late in the period.

The deficit proved short-lived as Steen beat Niemi from a bad angle less than a minute later to tie the game with 43.1 seconds left in the period and the Blues rolled from there.

NOTES: Thornton missed his first game since serving a two-game suspension in November 2010 and first for injury since sitting three games late in the 2009-10 season. … Schwartz returned after missing seven games with a broken foot. F Colin Fraser was sent to Chicago of the AHL.